FEATURES

If you were a new student arriving at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge during the early 1970s with an expressed interest in mechanical engineering, you would have been advised to enroll in a class called “Introduction to Design.” Students in this class were provided compon...

Tree diseases, caused by microbial pathogens many of which are carried by insect vectors, are spreading faster than ever. “Trees didn't evolve to be able to handle the sort of things we're throwing at them,” says Adam Costanza, president of the Institute of Forest Biotechnology (IFB) in...

Clinical and public health microbiologists have long collaborated when responding to infectious disease problems to identify microbial pathogens. These investigative efforts include veterinary and environmental laboratory colleagues, taking advantage of their special skills in these arenas. These...

CURRENT TOPICS

Viruses can manipulate the behavior of their insect hosts, according to Kelli Hoover at Pennsylvania State University (PSU) in University Park and her collaborators there and at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (FS) facility in Delaware, Ohio. These findings provide the first sol...

Microbial genomics as a strategy for developing antimicrobial drugs “failed to deliver” in part because “we don't understand the biology,” says Eric Brown of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. His strategy to overcome that impasse involves using antibiotics to “probe biology” ...

The prospects for needle-free delivery of vaccines look bright, and this approach offers advantages that go beyond pain-free inoculations, according to Bruce Weniger of Vaccine and formerly of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Ga. He spoke during the symposiu...

Although neither antibiotics nor the compound “C10” when used alone can kill antibiotic-resistant persister bacterial cells, pairing C10 with antibiotics proves effective, according to Dae-Hyuk Kweon, of Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea, and his collaborators. “We found that [C10] woke up the...

Squalamine, a compound from sharks that is known for its anticancer activity, also has broad-spectrum antiviral activity, according to Michael Zasloff of Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and his collaborators. Its mechanism of action helps to explain this versatility, he ...

ANIMALCULES

ASM NEWS

“Finally, one site with a variety of information needed for the day-to-day work of diagnostic microbiologists and immunologists,” stated J. Michael Miller, Ph.D., D(ABMM). ASM's Clinical Microbiology web portal, http://clinmicro.asm.org, was launched last month under Miller's guidance.More...

DEPARTMENTS

A challenge in efforts to develop a vaccine against salmonella is to detoxify salmonella lipid A while retaining its adjuvant properties for use in live attenuated vaccines for humans. Now Qingke Kong of Arizona State University, Tempe, and collaborators show that this toxicity can be reduced by ...

Sherwood Casjens of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, et al. announce the genome sequences of Lyme disease-causing bacteria. The Borrelia species are unusual for their linear chromosomes and for carrying more plasmids than any other bacteria, and because their...

Bacteroides fragilis is a strict anaerobe that comprises approximately 1 to 2% of the normal intestinal flora. While normally commensal, it is the pathogenic anaerobe most frequently isolated from intra-abdominal infections. Martin Lawrence of Montan...

New therapeutics to treat Escherichia coli O157 and related Shiga toxin-producing E. coli are needed because antibiotics can augment toxin production and exacerbate the consequences of infection. Dean Scholl of AvidBioics Corp., South ...

More than 25% of the world's population, and about 10% of Americans over age 12, are thought to be chronically infected with the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma, often due to eating undercooked or raw meat. This pathogen has two asexual stages, the rapidly growin...